


Mess with my crew and you’re leaving in pizzas

by bonyenne



Category: Batman - All Media Types, The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Batfamily (DCU), Gen, don't mind me just tossing around some catharsis, it's not like super graphically depicted but the joker does die on screen so there's that, joker dies, life is good, takes place at some indeterminate time in both sources, yes i couldn't resist the puns in the description but there aren't any in the story lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-17 02:35:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28841745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bonyenne/pseuds/bonyenne
Summary: Klaus takes a much-needed vacation. He ends up in Gotham city, somewhere he hasn’t been since before all this end-of-the-world mess, and seeks out an old friend.The boys are out for pizza when some guy shows up claiming to know Jason. Before they can figure out how, they’re interrupted.Sometimes for pizza mind, you just need to see the Joker in pizzas.
Relationships: Klaus Hargreeves & Jason Todd
Comments: 16
Kudos: 132





	Mess with my crew and you’re leaving in pizzas

Jason nudges Tim’s elbow away from his side of the booth, wishing yet again that he’d had the forethought to disappear into the bathroom for just long enough to snag the outer seat with the easy escape. Not that any of them would have let him, even though he promised he wouldn’t disappear on them. This shrimp probably planned to fall asleep even, just to trap him here. His feet barely even touch the ground; what does he need the aisle for?

He cranes his neck, looking around for Dick and the pizzas and steadfastly ignoring the demon spawn across from his replacement. No pizza yet, just some skinny guy already dressed for clubbing who’s staring at him from across the parlor. How did he land babysitting duty here? Oh, right—trapped by the sleeping body next to him. The man stumbles closer, clasping his hands together in front of his chest.

“Jason! We’ve been looking all over town for you!”

Jason frowns. “What?”

Party guy’s looking at him like they’re long-lost best friends. Something about him makes Jason feel like that’s almost right, but at the same time he’s nearly certain he’s never seen him before in his life.

“Who are you?” Damian demands.

The man claps his hands to his cheeks, beaming at Jason and completely ignoring Damian. “You figured out how to change your look!!”

A flash of the old Pit rage springs up for a split second and Jason yanks his hand down as it raises of its own accord to tug at his white forelock. What kind of damned self-conscious kid is he turning into? He’s been over it for a while now. He grits his jaw and rubs at his chest, feeling strangely like he can’t breathe under the weight of the other man’s gaze.

He opens his mouth to ask what the hell the guy’s talking about, but Damian cuts in, gripping a knife slightly too readily to be ignored. The man doesn’t seem to notice.

“How do you know Todd?”

At his question, the guy’s jaw drops and he swings around to stare at Damian instead. “You can see him?”

“Of course I can see him, are you inebriated?”

“I’m four months sober, you little brat!”

“Four whole months, good for you,” Damian retorts, rolling his eyes.

Four months is a lot to an addict. Jason kicks Damian under the table in a silent command to ease up, but the man hones in on their contact at once, clearly reading the action in their body language. He leans forward until he’s almost nose to nose with the kid, pausing—without flinching—a hair away from the knife Damian raises in return.

“You can touch him, too! Can you see Ben?” he asks as he gestures to the empty space just behind him.

“Ben?” Dick asks, sailing through the empty space with two large pizzas. “Sorry, I haven’t met anybody by that name today. Who’s our friend here?”

“This man claims to know Todd,” Damian responds as Dick slides him further into the booth, deftly grabbing the knife and setting it down between them.

“Oh really? How do you know Jason?” Dick turns the full force of his sunny personality on the guy, who fans himself and leans in further with a flirtatious smile before jerking back with an annoyed look behind him.

“I was in Gotham a few years back,” he responds, waving his hand at the air and giving Dick another interested once-over. “Landed myself in six months of court-ordered rehab.”

“Where you… met Jason?”

“Yeah, he showed up a week or so in, hung out with us for the rest of my stint.” He looks back at Jason with a pained expression. “You know I didn’t mean to leave you behind, right? I just couldn’t handle the rest of them, all that screaming and pain. I had to make them go away. You understand, right?”

Jason’s so far from understanding it’s like his ears are ringing, but he nods. What else can he do? Why is his tongue so tied?

Dick frowns uncertainly. “Jason’s never been in rehab,” he says at the same time as Damian declares: “Todd doesn’t utilize psychoactive substances.”

“I know _that_ ,” the guy replies with a laugh. “You should have seen the way he looked at me at first. I think he only ended up there cause he was all turned around, but then he got on with Ben like a house on fire and stuck with us.”

He turns to Jason with a frown. “Speaking of Ben, you asshole, just because there’s company, it doesn’t mean you get to ignore him. We came all this way just to find you and this is how you respond?”

Dick’s face turns pitying at the same time as the dots connect for Jason. Of course this guy’s spouting nonsense—he’s seeing things that aren’t there. He must have been hit with something by one of the rogues years back, met Jason briefly and spun up a whole life together. Dick makes eye contact with him as the guy briefly turns and argues with the air. Jason jerks his chin in a nod. Damian huffs, but Dick ignores him and invites the guy to sit when he turns back to their table.

It’ll probably fall on Jason’s shoulders to escort him back to rehab once they’ve eaten, but at least it won’t be on an empty stomach.

The guy grins and pulls up two chairs, sitting in the one next to Tim’s hunched over form and leaving the one next to Dick empty. He leans in to get a closer look, poking at his shoulder like he’s not sure it’ll connect. “Who’s this? Is he dead, or alive?”

“He’s alive,” Jason snorts. “But not for lack of trying.”

“I know that feeling.”

“I’m Dick,” Dick says, reaching out to shake his hand.

“Oh, _Dick!”_ the guy exclaims instead of introducing himself. “Jason really did look up to you, you know. Even though he thought you were a total dick. He’s here, you know—” he gestures to Jason, “if you want to say hi.”

“Hey, Jason,” Dick obediently waves across the table and Jason rolls his eyes back at him.

“So what’s with the kids? Are they the Robins who came after you two?”

Damian grabs the knife again, just fast enough that when Dick goes for it he ends up with his wrist instead. In the same instant, Jason tries to tug Tim away from the guy, who wakes up with a flail, clamping his own hand around the stranger’s wrist and frowning down at it.

“Was I not supposed to say that?”

Dick forces out a laugh. “Not supposed to say what? I think you’re a little confused… how did you say you knew Jason again?”

“I told you, I was in rehab.”

“But I wasn’t,” Jason responds.

“Of course not, that’s ridiculous!”

“So why was I there?”

The guy frowns, looking back and forth at the rest of the table. He turns to the empty chair next to him and opens his mouth before closing it again and looking back at Jason. “Because—”

“Because you were dead,” Tim cuts in, still staring at the guy’s wrist.

Dick chokes and lets out another nervous laugh. “What are you talking about, Tim?”

“You can hear him too?” the guy asks.

“We can all hear him,” Tim responds. “He came back to life.”

“What the fuck?” The question echoes around the table.

“I’m sorry, my brother’s a little confused,” Dick tries to smooth things over. “He must have had a weird dream.”

“But you met him before that, didn’t you, Seance?” Tim continues. “Who’s in the other chair?”

“Seances don’t work, Drake!”

Damian’s got his knees up now, crouching on the booth seat in the optimal position to spring. Jason’s knees want to draw up too, but there’s no room. His tongue is too thick for his mouth. He looks down at his hand, half expecting to see blood all over it.

“—okay? Jas—”

“I’m fine!”

It comes out far too loudly, and the whole room goes silent for a second as the other diners pause in their own conversations. There’s a ringing in his ears that won’t go away, and he flings his hands up to protect his head as the ringing escalates into screams. There’s a weight pressing into Jason’s side, pinning him into the corner, and he tries to rip his arms free but they’re already up around his ears.

“Jason!!”

A pizza smacks into his face and he blinks to see Damian staring at him in consternation. Tim is the one pressing him into the booth, and the new guy is shoulder to shoulder with Dick, standing in front of the rest of them as the Joker stalks into the pizza parlor, flanked by two thugs with machine guns.

“There are so many of them,” the new guy murmurs, looking sick.

“He’s the one who killed Jason,” Tim responds.

“Yeah, I’m getting that vibe,” the guy says, eyes flickering around the room. “Some of these people look even worse, and that’s saying somethin—”

The Joker’s attention snaps to them and his smile goes even wider in recognition. He stalks forward with a laugh.

“Dare I see the little Wayne brats?”

“Don’t act so surprised,” Damian spits, “you came because you knew we were here.”

“Au contraire, my little hostage, this is just a perfect fluke of fortune. The world playing a delicious joke on you; a present for its favorite Joker! Now, which one of you gets to live today, to carry the tale back to dear old daddy?”

He levels the gun at Damian. “Eenie.”

He turns it on Dick. “Meenie.”

He swings it over to Tim, pausing briefly with a frown at the unknown man between them before skipping over him to point at the known Drake-Wayne heir. “Miney.”

He locks eyes with Jason, drawing his lips up in pure glee.

“Four!” Tim orders.

The Joker narrows his eyes and looks back down at Tim in annoyance, keeping the gun trained at his head. “I’m rhyming, you silly boy, not counting.”

“He was talking to me,” the guy between them says, starting to glow blue. “And you’re the one dying, you jackass, because I counted the marks you left with that crowbar, and Jason was fourteen _fucking_ years old!”

“What??”

The Joker stumbles backward as a figure appears before them, tentacles slamming out of his chest. Several of them grab the Joker and literally rip him limb from limb as the rest of the tentacles pick his henchmen up and chuck them through the closed window.

Dick throws himself into the booth, covering Damian with his body. Tim schools his face to blankness, tucking away a vicious little smirk that’s flirting with the edge of his lips. Jason wheezes in shock.

“You just—”

The blue figures both turn, and the one with tentacles somehow sucks them back into his body even though they’re far too large to fit, waving at them in the process.

“Hey Jason,” he says with a grin. “Long time no see.”

“You just—that was—”

“Anticlimactic?” Tim suggests.

“Cathartic?” the one hiding tentacles asks.

“Surprising?” the first guy adds. “I bet you never thought I’d be able to do something like that!”

“Wait a minute: _Seance!”_ Dick says. “Number… Six?”

“Four,” the guy says, “he’s Six.”

“He is clearly an adult!” Damian interjects.

“Oh no, that’s his name, our Dad was a total dick. But we don’t go by the numbers anymore. I’m Klaus, and this is—”

“—Ben,” Jason finishes for him.

“Right, Ben!! You remember?”

Jason collapses back into the booth seat, rubbing his temples as images swirl behind his eyelids. “I’m… beginning to.”

Klaus turns his back on the pieces of Joker spattered across the room and snags his chair again as well, grabbing a slice of pizza and gesturing for Ben to take a seat. He does so, remaining visible this time, and grins at Jason.

Dick blinks at them, then at the room behind them. “B is gonna be so pissed.”

“Good for him,” Jason grunts. “But I sure ain’t.”

Klaus smiles now too, and Jason’s lips twitch of their own accord as he takes a long moment to revel in the scene over Klaus and Ben's shoulders one more time. A curl of warmth unfurls in his chest, and he grins back at the two of them, feeling lighter than he’s felt in a while.

He may not fully remember them just yet, but he’s more than willing to try.


End file.
